Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue captures the turbulence of youth culture of the early '80s by presenting a three-person nuclear family that is about to implode. In a prologue, Don Barnes (Dennis Hopper), a school bus driver, is drunkenly distracted one day behind the wheel, resulting in a horrible accident. He comes home from a stint in prison to find his wife, Kathy (Sharon/i>

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Overview

Out of the Blue captures the turbulence of youth culture of the early '80s by presenting a three-person nuclear family that is about to implode. In a prologue, Don Barnes (Dennis Hopper), a school bus driver, is drunkenly distracted one day behind the wheel, resulting in a horrible accident. He comes home from a stint in prison to find his wife, Kathy (Sharon Farrell), hooked on drugs and his now-teenaged daughter, Cindy (Linda Manz), sullen and remote. Don's old buddies are a fun-loving bunch who work only to afford to get high and party, and he seems to be falling back into his old ways instead of getting straight and pulling his family out of their funk. The story focuses on Cindy's alienation from both her parents and most of her classmates. She's influenced by the energy and anger of punk music and considers her parents pathetic relics of the '60s counterculture. Hopper reportedly took over direction of the film after co-producer/co-writer Leonard Yakir departed the production. It was Hopper's first job behind the camera since The Last Movie, his legendary flop follow-up to Easy Rider.

Editorial Reviews

All Movie Guide - Tom Wiener

Taking its title from a lyric in Neil Young's ode to punk rock, "Hey Hey, My My," Out of the Blue, which uses Young's song on its soundtrack, offers a bleak and unsparing portrait of teenage life in the early '80s. Granted, the deck is stacked pretty high against Cindy Barnes, with Dad just returning from a prison sentence after he drunkenly crashed his school bus, and Mom a full-time junkie. Linda Manz is the scowling kid, a leather-jacketed update of James Dean's Jim from Rebel Without a Cause, a film her co-star and director Dennis Hopper played a small role in. Brilliant in supporting roles in Days of Heaven and The Wanderers, Manz seized her best chance yet at stardom and made this film her coming-out party. Unfortunately, she never got another role that used her talents so well. But the film did give Hopper his first opportunity in ten years to direct, and he acquitted himself nicely. Even if Out of the Blue was too much of a mood piece to connect with a large audience, it has lasting value as a time-capsule look at an era and at two careers.